


In The Details

by Im_The_Doctor (Bofur1)



Series: The Thinker, The Feeler [11]
Category: Transformers: Rescue Bots
Genre: Apologies, Arguing, Dubious Science, Explanations, False Accusations, Firefighters, Frustration, Law Enforcement, Logic, Loyalty, Mid-Canon, Multi, Partnership, Police, Questioning, Rescue Missions, Shame, Snark, Threats, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bofur1/pseuds/Im_The_Doctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Heatwave could say it was very rare that he saw Chief Burns angry.</em><br/>“I’ve seen this before, but it hasn’t honestly bothered me until today. I figured you could tell me what happened to make Chase like this.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In The Details

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Enclosed in the story is a headcanon credited to delkios on tumblr. I suggest you read that story first but it's not severely mandatory. If you want to read the headcanon, go [here](http://delkios.tumblr.com/tagged/rescue-bots) and look for "Everything's Alright". I've adopted and adapted this headcanon for my own purposes.
> 
> If you want the short version, it's that some Bots have been part of scientific experiments which dampen their emotions to make them "more objective", but it just makes it hard for them to understand abstract ideas like "fun" or "joy" or "hate". Some of these Bots develop anxiety problems, obsessiveness, perfectionism, etc.

Heatwave could say it was very rare that he saw Chief Burns angry. To anyone else, this might have made it difficult to recognize, but Heatwave knew better than the rest of the team what anger felt and looked like, so he realized it as soon as the human entered the underground bunker. The fact that he recognized it didn’t make it any less surprising, so as the Chief came right at him, Heatwave glanced at the other Bots.

“Boulder, Blades…how about you go check on your partners?” he suggested, throwing a subtle jab of chirolinguistic slang at them with an obvious meaning. Fortunately both of them took the hint without asking any questions, using the platform that would lead upstairs.

“What’s wrong, Chief?” Heatwave asked as soon as the others were out of sight.

Chief Burns fumed for a minute or two before folding his arms and scowling more deeply as he began, “I trust you’ve noticed Chase tends toward the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.”

Chuckling humorlessly, Heatwave nodded. “I think that’s the biggest understatement you’ve made since I’ve known you.” Even as he made this remark, he felt a stirring of regret and expectation. He should have known this conversation would come up, but he hadn’t expected it so soon and he hadn’t prepared his spark and processor for it. His vocals were a bit more cautious as he probed, “…What happened?”

“What happened isn’t important,” Burns waved the question away. “But how Chase reacted to it is. I worry that sooner or later he’s going to blow your cover by being too insistent on a full penalty. Why is he…?” He paused, his mouth twisting in frustration as he looked for the most tactful words. “How did he become who he is?” When Heatwave didn’t answer right away, he continued in a bit of a rush, “I’ve seen this before with Chase and I haven’t found it hard to be patient with him, but it hasn’t honestly bothered me until today. I figured since you know him best, you could tell me what happened to make him like this.”

Heatwave leaned against the wall underneath the alarms, letting his gaze narrow and drift to the floor. “NET happened,” he spat at last, feeling a rush of anger simply verbalizing it.

“Net? He was trapped somehow?”

“Oh, yeah. Like you wouldn’t believe,” Heatwave scoffed bitterly. “Okay, I’ll try to condense this. NET is an acronym for the Neural Exploration Trial.” Upon earning a blank look, he continued, “It was a scientific program that had been going on for centuries. Boulder would probably explain it better than me, or at least more accurately, but the researchers never got the results they wanted, so they kept going and screwed up a lot of bots in the process, important bots.”

“Weren’t _all_ of them important?” Chief questioned hesitantly.

“To someone, of course. But mechs who were vital to the war effort weren’t exempt either,” Heatwave sighed, feeling a weight press in on his chest. “Sometimes NET mechs found their way to positions of power. Optimus Prime’s chief of security was one. Some suspected his second-in-command of it too, though that was never proved. Chase…When we registered as partners in the Rescue Academy—ha, there’s a story behind that too—we were given each other’s health records. I didn’t need them; I already knew about it and suspected that Chase was part of it, but this is how I _witnessed_ it.”

—

“You shouldn’t have been messing around with a blaster core at all, much less near those flammable materials,” Heatwave growled. “You’re lucky you’d walked away before it went off or the medics wouldn’t be able to repair your damage! Do you understand?”

The femme whimpered and nodded timidly and Heatwave glared harder at her to really imprint the message into her CPU as the medics did their work. Glancing up at the chief medic, Heatwave asked in lower tones, “How she’s going to be?”

“Ah, she’ll be alright once her systems can clear the soot,” the doctor replied as he snaked a line into the subject’s vents, earning a pained wheeze. “And as for the burns, they may look bad but they’re actually fairly minor. It’s fortunate you were there to get her out of there as efficiently as you did!”

Heatwave felt a spark of pride worm its way through him. This had been their first run that wasn’t a training scenario and frankly Heatwave believed he and everyone else should be appreciative of how it had been handled. Even so, he answered graciously, as any good, humble firemech ought to.

“I wouldn’t have been able to if my partner hadn’t gotten the location from her brother and called me on his patrol.” So saying, he glanced at Chase. The officer didn’t notice, too busy typing furiously on a data pad with one hand and holding a handheld comm. unit to his audial with the other. No doubt he was reporting the facts to their superiors.

“It was good work from both of you,” the medic declared, to which Heatwave grinned. He’d have to tell Chase that once he was off his comm. unit; he would be glad that he was included in the compliment. In the meantime, he should clean some of this soot and fire foam from his—

“Versa!” Heatwave barely registered the cry before the femme’s brother was barreling into him. Heatwave was a sturdy mech, but he was taken by surprise and thrown off his feet with an indignant grunt.

He scrambled back upright almost immediately, grumbling at the overenthusiastic brother as he turned away, only to stop up short. Chase had hung up his comm. link and was now looking between the siblings intently. He wasn’t often one to project his emotions through words, much less _visibly_ , but judging by the frown darkening his features, today was going to be different.

As much as Heatwave was glad that his training of Chase in emotions was paying off, he wasn’t sure what to think of the fact that one of the first emotions he was displaying was disapproval. Or was that as close as Chase could get to anger? Heatwave didn’t really want to find out, so as much as he knew he should ask what was wrong, he began walking away from the spontaneous rescue site toward the nearest public wash-racks. His partner detected this and took initiative to follow him.

“Her brother, Vice, should be given a record, Heatwave,” he announced his presence, falling into stride with Heatwave, who huffed in surprise, flinging grimy foam from his hands and then spreading them wide.

“Why? He remembered where the fire was in time—obviously.” He halted in order to gesture at the dilapidated one-story building several yards away, drenched in the same synthetic foam as Heatwave’s frame.

“Even so, he was an obstruction to the rescue,” his partner insisted. “We cannot be sure he wasn’t conspiring for and/or with his relative who started the conflagration!” He cast an accusing glance at the femme who Heatwave had just been sternly rebuking.

“This wasn’t a conspiracy, Chase,” the firemech objected, privately thinking he sounded like his mentor Inferno’s close friend. “She made a mistake.”

“Obviously,” Chase agreed. “And her relative’s thoughtlessness wasted valuable time and, as I previously stated, obstructed us. These two have broken several laws. To be exact…” Imperiously he withdrew his data pad and read off, “Obstruction, reckless endangerment, an unregistered weapon used to instigate a fire—which implies arson—disregarding safety regulations regarding the home, not to mention the assault when he threw you to the ground. They must be charged for those misconducts.”

“You want to charge _both_ of them now? Chase, they’re third-frames!”

“A good observation,” Chase praised, green optics sparking with undue anticipation. “That means they can be considered fully matured and tried as such.”

“Tried?! Aren’t you exaggerating just a little?” Heatwave demanded, unease stirring in the back of his mind. “I think they’ve learned their lesson.”

“I know I still have much to learn about emotions and what can be construed as exaggeration, but I don’t believe I’m guilty of it,” Chase argued, straightening solemnly and adding, “I intend to request Vice and Versa be taken in once the femme has recovered.”

“Oh, at least you’re giving them time for that!” Heatwave exclaimed sarcastically before sighing deeply and turning to face him more fully. “Chase, listen to me. Don’t make that report.”

“But justice must be served!” Chase protested. “They were deliberately—”

“It was an _accident_ ,” Heatwave enunciated clearly and firmly, as though speaking to a sparkling. “There wasn’t any plan for this, there wasn’t a conspiracy. They aren’t terrorists, they’re just two young bots—one who made a mistake and the other who was just forgetful in his panic. C’mon, let it go.” He tried to put a hand on Chase’s shoulder but the officer shrugged it off, leaving a smear of foam across his plating.

“I know the law well, Heatwave, and it explicitly states that criminals must pay their dues!” he declared. “I _am_ filing that report; I simply wanted to give you advance notice because you are my partner.”

“Yes, I am,” Heatwave snapped, feeling his plating flare defensively. “And that means we need to make decisions like this together.”

“I do believe I remember you informing me that you don’t care much for the rules,” Chase shot back, his vocals monotonous but surprisingly cold. “On _numerous_ occasions, as well as suggesting that we should, I quote, ‘keep our job descriptions separate.’”

“Then you shouldn’t have given me advance notice!” Heatwave growled. “Because I’m going to stop you.”

“Then you will need to physically restrain me. Thereby you’ll be forced to assault and unlawfully detain an officer,” Chase announced, mirroring his earlier action and spreading his arms out almost welcomingly. “So if you intend to, please do it now and not while my back is turned so I won’t consider it a betrayal.”

Heatwave stared at him in disbelief. He was right when he said he didn’t exaggerate. “Chase…I’m not going to attack you, I just want you to think about this.”

“I have taken a lot into consideration and have simply amassed more evidence against—”

“That’s _not_ what I mean!” How could he change his mind? He had to manipulate some of the facts with a logic that Chase would accept. Steeling himself, he burst out, “He assaulted me when he shoved me, right?”

“Certainly.”

“Well, I don’t want to press charges. You can drop that.”

Blinking a few times, Chase lifted his shoulders in a shrug that seemed very stiff. “Very well, but that doesn’t take away from the other—”

“And that weapon _was_ probably registered,” Heatwave continued as though he hadn’t heard. “Just to someone else. Charges should be withheld until we know for sure and then they should be pressed against the original owner for letting a young femme get ahold of it. _That’s_ a form of reckless endangerment, right?”

“I—I suppose…”

“And she never would have been able to start the fire if it hadn’t come into her hands, so whoever the owner of the weapon is, that’s their fault too!” Heatwave insisted. “Vice told me the house doesn’t belong to either of them, it belongs to their creators, so the lack of safety is on them, not him and Versa.”

Chase almost managed to look startled as he glanced at his list and found the only thing Heatwave hadn’t covered. “The obstruction.”

Heatwave had long since perfected the skeptical raise of the eyebrows and that was how he answered the question. “On what grounds?” As Chase paused to consider the question, he continued sternly, “This is what I mean. _Think_ about it. Personally I think you were frustrated that he didn’t answer quickly enough, but nothing bad came out of it. We rescued her and the medics say she’s going to be just fine.”

To anyone else, the reaction would have been invisible, but Heatwave had been working on reading Chase’s face ever since he’d agreed to help him explore emotions. He watched the progression of puzzlement, surprise, realization, and then understanding, as though he were waking from a haze. That was familiar enough, but he wasn’t expecting the helplessness and—was that _shame?_

“I apologize, Heatwave. I should have warned you this would happen…” Before Heatwave could ask what he meant, Chase rushed on. “The NET programming, as you know, was designed to make me more efficient…but in trying to make me supremely analytical, it can skew my thinking by causing what can be called a _rivet_ , where I fixate too strongly on details at random. It’s regrettably rare that I can shake it off independently, so I may need a good deal of jarring to see other viewpoints impartially. In a way, I’ve risked your safety and others’ by omitting it.”

“Should I report you for reckless endangerment?” Heatwave snarked without thinking, regretting it as soon as it was out of his mouth. “S-Sorry, I’m sorry, Chase, I didn’t mean that.” There was an awkward silence and then he muttered, “Um…thanks for telling me. I can tell you, I’m a good person for jarring.”

“I’m fully aware,” Chase replied gravely. “Please don’t hesitate. I would like to think you’ll spare me from further embarrassment and from those who may hope to benefit from my riveting by manipulating details to suit their purposes, as you just did.”

“I’ve got your back,” Heatwave swore, returning the hand to his shoulder and squeezing. “And I’ll try to manipulate the details as honestly as I can.” He smiled a bit sheepishly, admitting, “That didn’t come out quite like I meant it to.”

—

“So that’s what’s happening when he overreacts and why,” Heatwave concluded.

Chief Burns stayed quiet for a while before he commented, “So he can’t help it?”

Heatwave nodded somberly, clenching and unclenching his fists. “NET’s purpose was to mess with mechs’ programming to edit out emotions, but they come from the spark. They can’t be removed, just suppressed. When they couldn’t have what they originally wanted, they changed the goal: to make their subjects feel just one thing. They would minimize all the other emotions and make them just…happy, or hypervigilant, or loyal…even logical. All the time. When Blades said we’d have to explain to Chase what fun meant, he wasn’t kidding. He’ll try to overanalyze it.”

The Chief hesitated and then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “That can’t be easy for you.”

If asked, Heatwave would say he was quite surprised at this remark. “Me? I’m not the one who got my coding tampered with,” he countered.

“True, but just because it was my wife who got sick doesn’t mean I wasn’t affected by it,” Chief pointed out.

That startled Heatwave even more. As far as he could remember, the human had never mentioned his wife, though of course he would have needed to have one. Come to think of it, the kids never mentioned her either.

 _Because they were affected by it too_ , he realized, shifting uneasily.

“When someone you care about is messed with, you try to protect them and it can wear you out,” Chief continued. “That’s true for anyone. But what matters is whether or not you quit, I suppose.”

Heatwave decided he needed to ask if he’d made the Chief uncomfortable or guilty for something he hadn’t caused, but before he could, the platform above them began lowering into the bunker, holding the subject of their conversation.

“Chief Burns,” Chase greeted, stepping off before the platform had fully landed, which meant he was being hasty. “I wanted to apologize for how I reacted on patrol earlier and explain my actions. I was part of a program which—”

“I was just telling him,” Heatwave cut in, earning a grateful glance which became repentant when it returned to the human.

“Lately I have been making my best attempts to resist the riveting, but without the aid of a circuit card or, more drastically, a programming reset, I’m afraid I…” Chase swallowed. “…I’m afraid I’ll fail every time. My resistance is inadequate and for that I’m—”

“It’s not your fault, Chase,” Burns assured him, holding up a hand before he could make another apology. “And now that I know, I’m going to cut you some slack and try to do what Heatwave does: I’ll just explain it to you.”

Chase seemed relieved at his understanding and glanced at Heatwave again, earning a subtle nod. _I’ve got your back_.


End file.
